For most people outside the R&D lab and the small number of countries that have approved it, cultivated meat has remained shrouded in mystique. An exciting innovation in the abstract, yes, but when it comes to what it actually tastes like, most have no idea.
For a small group of consumers, that is no longer the case. In a free public tasting, the first of its kind, consumers were given the opportunity to try cultivated meat.
What do consumers think of cultivated meat?
Cultivated meat, also known as cultured meat, is meat grown from cells in a medium rather than from animals on a farm.
While it’s available in Singapore and recent regulatory approval in Australia means consumers there will see it on menus soon, in most markets, cultivated meat remains unavailable due to strict regulatory constraints. It therefore is still out of reach for most consumers.
But this hasn’t stopped consumers, and governments, developing strong opinions about lab-grown meat. A backlash has seen policymakers move to ban the product in both Italy and a range of US states, including Florida. Many have branded it “Frankenfood”. Some agricultural producers see it as a potential threat to their livelihood.
Nevertheless, the question remains – what’s the reaction when consumers actually try it?
Do consumers like the taste of cultivated meat?
It’s one thing to understand conceptually what cultivated meat is, and another to taste it oneself.
A study in the journal Science of Food looked at consumer responses from a public tasting, hosted by the US cultivated meat company Upside Foods. The tasting, of Upside’s cultivated chicken, was hosted in Florida, US, just four days before the state’s ban on cultivated meat was due to come into effect. The event framed the ban as in opposition to American v